TotalEnergies was formally accused of complicity in war crimes and torture in a complaint filed Monday in Paris over a massacre at its Mozambique gas site. This massacre was first revealed by a POLITICO investigation last year.
The complaint, filed by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), a human rights association, claims that TotalEnergies was complicit in what is now called the “container massacre” by having “directly financed and materially supported” the Mozambican soldiers who protected its compound from an insurrection led by a group linked to the Islamic State.
As POLITICO revealed, the soldiers, established in the TotalEnergies concession just south of the Tanzanian border, brutalized, starved, suffocated, executed or disappeared around 200 men in a sentry box between June and September 2021.
“TotalEnergies knew that the Mozambican armed forces had been accused of systematic human rights violations, but continued to support them for the sole purpose of securing its own facilities,” said Clara Gonzales, co-director of the business and human rights program for ECCHR, a group of German lawyers specializing in international law.
In response to questions posed by POLITICO last year, TotalEnergies — through its subsidiary Mozambique LNG — said it had no knowledge of killings near the containers, adding that its “extensive research” had “identified no information or evidence that could corroborate allegations of serious abuse and torture.”
Questioned in the National Assembly in May on the murders committed in the gatehouses, Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of TotalEnergies, rejected “allegations” and demanded that the company’s accusers “provide proof of their claims”.
The 56-page complaint, which also accuses major oil and gas company of complicity in forced disappearances, was filed before the French national anti-terrorism prosecutor, whose remit includes war crimes. He will decide whether to open a formal investigation and appoint an investigating judge. If the case goes to trial, the penalties incurred range from five years’ imprisonment to life imprisonment.
180 to 250 men crammed into containers, 26 survivors
The complaint was filed undera legal principle known as “universal jurisdiction,” which allows a country to prosecute crimes committed outside its territory. Forged in Nuremberg and Tokyo in the aftermath of World War II, the principle has been used more recently by domestic and international tribunals to try warlords and dictators — and by domestic courts to prosecute citizens or corporations involved in abuses abroad, where local justice systems are weak.
The ECCHR has already filed a criminal complaint against French cement manufacturer Lafarge over its activities in Syria, accusing it of paying protection funds to ISIS. Since then, an investigating judge has taken up the case, and the company and eight former executives will be tried this month in Paris for financing terrorism. An accusation they deny. A US court has already fined the company $777.8 million for financing terrorism through its operations in Syria.
Clara Gonzales, of the ECCHR, asked the French justice system to also take up the TotalEnergies affair. “Businesses and their leaders are not neutral actors when operating in conflict zones,” she said. “If they enable or fuel crimes, they may be complicit and must be held accountable.”
POLITICO first revealed in September 2024 how Mozambican commandos based at the TotalEnergies gas site — the largest-ever private investment in Africa — rounded up around 500 villagers and accused them of supporting local insurgents.
The soldiers separated the men from the women and children, raped several women, then crammed 180 to 250 men into the two windowless metal containers that formed a crude fortified entrance to the TotalEnergies site.
According to eleven survivors and two witnesses, the men were imprisoned for three months in 30 degree heat. Some suffocated. Others died of starvation or thirst after being fed only handfuls of rice and water bottle caps. Soldiers beat and tortured many others. Finally, they took them away in groups before executing them.
Only 26 men survived, rescued when a Rwandan intervention force, deployed to fight the Islamic State-affiliated group, discovered the operation. A house-to-house investigation carried out by POLITICO subsequently made it possible to identify by name 97 of the people killed or missing.
$4.5 billion in losses
The ECCHR complaint is the second legal action affecting TotalEnergies’ Mozambican operation this year. In March, the public prosecutor announced the opening of an investigation against the company for involuntary manslaughter and failure to assist a person in danger after the death of 55 of its construction contractors during an attack perpetrated by the Islamic State in March 2021 in the neighboring town of Palma.
TotalEnergies, which claimed not to have lost any of its employees during the attack, denies these accusations. After suspending construction of the plant following the attack, the company resumed operations last month and hopes to start pumping gas by 2029.
Patrick Pouyanné revealed last month that this pause has resulted in additional costs for his company of $4.5 billion since 2021, an amount he wants to be reimbursed by the Mozambican government. The project also depends on $14.9 billion in loans, some of which are uncertain.
Export credit agency UK Export Finance, which had pledged $1.1 billion, has yet to release the funds after opening an investigation into the container killings this year. The Dutch government, which promised $1.2 billion in guarantees, is conducting its own investigation. Meanwhile, US environmentalists have sued the US Export-Import Bank over of its $4.7 billion loan.
Lorette Philippot, campaigner at Friends of the Earth in France, which supports the ECCHR legal action, said that “the seriousness of the allegations against TotalEnergies (…) must constitute a red line for the financiers of Mozambique LNG. They did not sign blank checks”.
Evidence in the ECCHR complaint includes photographs of the containers and internal TotalEnergies documents, seen by POLITICO, obtained through Italian and Dutch freedom of information requests.
The NGO intends to show with this evidence that the company knew that its Mozambican guards regularly committed human rights violations, including murders, and that it was aware of the increase in incidents in the months following the Palma attack. TotalEnergies security reports document multiple abuses committed by soldiers stationed at its gas site, known as the Joint Task Force, between June and September 2021. After an incident in August 2021, which is not described in detail, TotalEnergies suspended the pay of all 1,000 soldiers at its site, and the Mozambican army ejected 200 soldiers from the facility.
“Knowing all this,” writes the ECCHR, “TotalEnergies nevertheless continued to directly support the Joint Task Force by providing housing, food, equipment and bonuses for the soldiers — while stipulating that the bonuses would be withdrawn if the soldiers committed human rights violations.”
This article was originally published in English by POLITICO and adapted into French by Alexandre Léchenet.
Disclaimer: This news article has been republished exactly as it appeared on its original source, without any modification.
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Author: Alex Perry
Published on: 2025-11-18 09:00:00
Source: www.politico.eu
